It's a bipolar world that I find myself in - this film industry. There are moments of elation and unequaled camaraderie and there are times of sheer angst and loneliness. Calms and sudden storms.

Last winter was lean. My heart hurt.

My friends are points of light. They cooked me meals and poured me drinks. We huddled around fires, there were companionable silences, there were hugs. Things got better by small increments and then suddenly in leaps. Now it's a year later and things are good. There's writing and the freedom it brings. Time for long lunches and music and books.

There are nights when I lie awake for hours, not from horrors that gnaw, but a buzzing excitement at being alive. The smell of the rain and the earth as I walk out the door. The crackle of vinyl. My heart in your hand and you play it to the beat.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

We went to see Dave Ferguson at the Granddaddy last night as the sun set. A true one man show. Nary a roadie in sight. There's a man, his voice and a harmonica. A flesh and bones beat-box. An array of tiny controls at his feet. He records live loops and then he layers and overlaps them to make songs. A silent projection behind him shows old blind blues singers, couples dancing swing, people clapping on a night similar to this one, lost in black and white.

Oh, what a crooner is he.

It always surprises me that there aren't hordes of girls throwing underwear, at least.

Watch the video to see how he turns a familiar song into something new. Last night it sent shivers down my spine.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

1. "Creepers". The songs that grow on you after a few plays and become keepers. This is how I came to love TV On The Radio, Arcade Fire, Eels, The XX, Electrelane, Dead Man's Bones, Angus & Julia Stone... a never-ending list.

2.Then there are the songs that have you from the first beat. Like falling in love. They have that elusive something that's missing from the others.

Tindersticks: Tony Soprano watches his beautiful neighbor from an upstairs window. She's hanging up laundry in the wind to Tiny Tears.

Can: dancing under the stars in the Hex River Valley to She brings the rain.

Captain Beefheart: driving alone through the Karoo to Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles.

It's very seldom that a band makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise, song after song.

Performance in it's truest form. In the old days Taylor Kirk would have been a troubadour. Poetry to music. This music could be the unreleased soundtrack to True Blood. It's cinematic, dark and brooding. There are violins, an organ, lap steel guitar, rattlesnake percussion, a discordant saloon piano...

The arrangements are sparse, stripped down, permeated with the sonic left turn, full of sway.

Stripped down, yes, but with moments of lush orchestration and exquisite crescendo. Not one to shout, the man croons intimately about love, loss and the abyss. Not a single note in excess. Even the silences in-between have weight.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

The photograph that Karl Lilje took of me and the big knife has been commented upon, written about and questioned. For the compliments, I thank you. As for the rest - let me put your minds at ease: I love cooking. I like sharp knives to cut things up with in the kitchen. Dicing and filleting. That's it. This trait runs in the family, but we don't throw knives at other people. At least not without good call.

My personal hell will be filled with blunt knives. I'm the kind of person who takes a Swiss Army and a Victorinox paring knife to picnics. Longer than a day? I'll pack the medium chef's knife too.

***

I keenly wished to love him. It's possible to learn a myriad of skills, from new languages and swimming, to being a calmer person. You can bend and mold your body - build muscles and mind power. But there is simply no way to make yourself love someone, even if it seems like the best idea in the whole wide world. We spent hours together reading recipes, cooking. Even now, the smell of freshly ground cardamom takes me back to that kitchen with the scary-sharp Sabatier knives, the blades flashing like sunlight in his hands. He was an adventurous cook. He delighted me with irreverence.

He took me on picnics in the forest.
Outdoor opera.
Shaolin Monks.
Veuve Clicquot in misty cold glasses.
Morello cherries, picked by us.
Blue blooded cheese from France.
His heart on a plate.
Figs stuffed with nuts and honey,
in golden paper pastry.
Dark smoky wine, the scent of chocolate and coffee.
A salad of the tiniest baby leaves. Spanish ham, translucent and salty. Spindly mushrooms, pale and delicate as ghosts. Walnut oil. Pomegranate molasses...

At the dinner table, he held my hand gently, rubbing the pillow of my thumb. I used to listen to him talk, lulled by his beautiful deep voice. Fears banished, doubts quelled. Lazy eyed and full bellied. But somehow it wouldn't last - despair would slowly take hold within me, the way ink spreads in water, and I would leave. Again and again.

The last time I went to his house, he wasn't there. I stood wretchedly looking at the fruit trees in the garden. Wishing for a different world and something else. I left the lime tree at his door. Pitiful I know, but it was something that could grow.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

A few weeks ago at a party, a friend walked up to me and asked: "May I have this dance?"
We had a good whirl around the dance floor - real dancing - with ballroom flourishes.
It was fantastic. It reminded me of my teens and it brought back memories of the slow dance. Why did we ever stop doing that?

So this is the deal. Next time DJ Appletart plays music at a party, there will be slow numbers in-between. That's your cue for holding your honey tight and doing the shuffle. Gazing into each others' eyes. Maybe even having a bit of a smooch.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

It started with a lily unfolding with an audible pop as I watched, dazed in skull'n'bone pajamas.

Then the beauty and the horror that was Black Swan.

Then new places with Shonah - she of the raw food delights.

In my lucky packet today: ginger-almond-spice stars. I ate three in a quick row. Well, "ate" is putting it politely. Not to mention the raw chocolate with roasted cocoa nibs and hazelnuts. Good gracious. This woman has talent. We had a really good coffee at Haasin Rose Street, though not the eighty buck cup of Kopi Luwak...

We spoke about the travel bug. I was told in the nicest way possible to get on with it.

This great procrastinator still hasn't renewed her passport.

I highly recommend a visit to Haas. It's an interesting, friendly place with a gallery full of quirky and lovely things.

We regrouped this evening at enmasse for a Thai massage. It was like stepping into some serene kind of underwater laboratory. And thank the Lord - no crap spa soundtrack of wailing sea creatures or ethereal choirs. Nouvelle Vague, Mirwais, John Martyn, even some dub. In white Thai pants and tunic, you're massaged on a comfortable white mattress on the floor. There are pillows and fluffy white blankets. The scent of aniseed. Deep rocking and rolling of pressure points. Stretching and kneading. At times you float like a skydiver. At times it feels as if a big and gentle jungle cat is walking all over you. At times it hurts, but in a really good way. Afterward, amazingly I could still walk and talk - in a fashion. Sipped Turkish apple tea from a beautiful glass.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Someone said to me the other night that eating warm marrow, scooped from the bone and spread on toast, is better than a first kiss. It's been on my mind ever since. Scientists believe that during evolution, our brains started growing when we began sucking marrow from bones... so we had some last night at Societi - they've just added them to their Autumn menu. Sourdough toast, salsa verde and two 18" bones on a plate. Not a pretty picture. But darned delicious. No wonder Anthony Bourdain wants this as his last meal. Many glasses of red wine later, we all piled into and out of the Fish's newly refurbished 1969 Mini Cooper, aka Minnie Driver. She is pale blue and white and heaps of fun. Helter-skelter and all the way home.

After a night like that, it seemed only fitting to go to the Natural Goods Market for lunch today.

I've been wanting to try my friend Shonah's raw food for some time now. It was delicious. The overruling thought as I ate that first mouthful: clean.

I sat at a big communal table and ate, tapping my foot to Soft Cell and LKJ, catching snippets of conversation about hyperactive grandchildren, muggings in New York, olive chutney...

In my bowl: raw Pad Thai, black-eyed bean Thoran with coconut milk and a very unusual and moreish sweet potato and avocado salad. A dessert of macadamia truffles and cranberry brownies. Equals one happy Lily.

And all of that for the price of a Big Mac and a Coke.

Mr Bourdain rants amusingly about this phenomenon in his book The Nasty Bits:
"Whenever possible, try to eat food that comes from somewhere, from somebody. And stop eating so fucking much. You may as well stop snacking on crap while you're at it. Save your appetite for something good! Take a little more time! All that rage and frustration, that hollow feeling so many of us feel - for so many good reasons - can be filled up with something better than a soggy disc of ground-up assholes and elbows. Eat for nourishment, yes, but eat for pleasure. Stop settling for less. That way, if we ever do have to get in there and "smoke evildoers out of their holes," at the very least, we'll be able to squeeze in after them."

Friday, April 1, 2011

I've been working on a commercial shrouded in secrecy. The actors are very famous - you know, they have entourages.

We've spent the last week milling about in the rain and the mist and the dark. Imbued with the scent of lemon trees and lavender, and wet grass. Outlandish theories on making a St Joseph lily open faster. (use shower steam)
The Cure on a loop in my car.
A room with seven hundred and forty four lit candles.

Then one evening there were no leftovers. I went to the grocery store. The sales clerk said artichokes are out of season. This is not San Diego. Still I dreamt of her, dipped in lemony butter, scraped carefully with teeth and sucked, the pale cream flesh, the tender flower, her skirt held like a cup, each sip bringing me closer to the moon, the vegetable pearl of her insides where the heart fans out fibrous hairs and waits a last mouthful of her green world.

Nin Andrews(1958-)

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Virginia Wolf

(1882-1941)

Never love anybody who treats you like you're ordinary.

Oscar Wilde

(1854-1900)

You could tend a garden at night, only at night, pouring dark water onto leaves, and into the earth, like pouring midnight onto midnight. You could hold your soil-stained hands up to the moon. The stars would gleam on the bottom of the shovel. It would smell the same as a daytime garden - it would smell green, violet, red, white. But come back, in daylight. Come back, to see the colours without closing your eyes.- Sean Michaels. Accompaniment to the song "Immune" by LOW. Said the Gramophone

"The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.

Katherine Mansfield

(1888-1923)

"It's important to begin a search on a full stomach."Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991

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It's an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence,like a love affair you can nevertalk about.For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you've been and what's happened. In the end, you're just happy you were there - with your eyes wide open - and lived to see it.Anthony Bourdain (1956-), from The Nasty Bits.

"You say the sentence or you write the sentence again and again until the tuning fork is still." - Martin Amis (1949-)

"People like me write because otherwise we are pretty inarticulate. Our articulation is our writing." – William Trevor (1928-)

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to." Jim Jarmusch (1953- )

"A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals." John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you smelled and saw nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I thought that Cézanne was probably hungry in a different way.Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) - from A Moveable Feast.

"Men are climbing to the Moon, but they don't seem interested in the beating human heart."Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), in a letter to a friend, one year before her death.

"The barbaric gleams right under the surface of all human skin."Jorie Graham (1950-)

S u b s c r i b e

"The real director of our life is Accident - a director full of cruelty, compassion and bewitching charm."Pascal Mercier (1944-)

"Talking of pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my mouth a nectarine - how good, how fine. It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all it's delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified strawberry ."John Keats (1795-1821)

"Words are only painted fire, a book is the fire itself."Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I'm what you might describe as the classic underachiever. I tread that fine line between boffin-dom and the grand amateur."Andrew Weatherall (1963-)

"The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds, his heart of hearts that the picturesdostop."Saul Bellow (1915-2005) from Ravelstein